Of Fire and Flame
by Frozen Obsidian
Summary: He promised a sacrifice. It will be paid. The life of Leo Valdez until the end. - Spoilers for the Mark of Athena
1. Prologue

Warning: Spoilers throughout the Heroes of Olympus, up to and including the Mark of Athena

**Of Fire and Flame**

**_Prologue _  
**

It starts with a baby in a fire.

The child is tan, with just the barest shock of dark curly hair on his head. His eyes are shut, sleeping peacefully as the sparks dance around him.

There is an old woman, wrinkled and haggard. She is singing a lullaby. The words are ancient; they might be a blessing or a curse.

They might be both.

The door opens suddenly and a woman rushes in screaming. The baby is snatched from the fire. He stares up at the woman with large brown eyes, curious and unafraid.

The old woman smiles underneath her ragged hood. The mother spins around to face her, eyes blazing with anger. She screams something in Spanish.

The old woman's eyes are cold when they stare back at her - cold and calculating and merciless.

The old woman vanishes and the mother falls onto the floor, crying as she cradles her baby to her chest.

Her poor baby, her little lion… what a fate she has doomed him to.

-0-0-0-

A few weeks later, the mother brings the baby to see his great-grandfather – the near-legendary Sammy Valdez. Her own grandfather, who had jiggled her when she herself was a toddler and taught her the secrets of engineering, now held _her_ child in his frail embrace.

When grandfather locks eyes with her _mijo_, a strange mist films his eyes. He starts blabbering about a girl, Hazel, and how her baby must keep his promise for him. Esperanza is scared, terrified, because it shows her things about her child's future which she would rather never know. Her lion belongs in another world, she knows, but he is her baby. He belongs with her.

She hopes, guiltily because her grandfather is obviously enamoured with the idea, that her Leo never meets this Hazel girl. A sinking feeling in her gut tells her that it will bring no good to either party.

Eventually, grandfather calms down and hands the baby back to her. For a second, she sees a vision of a diamond in his palm which sinks into Leo's skin. She stumbles back, clutching her child to her chest. She is white in fear.

Her grandfather doesn't notice, just continues to stare vacantly into space.

She runs out of the door.

Later, her sister Rosa calls and tells her that grandfather is dead.

-0-0-0-

Many strange incidents occur throughout her and Leo's life. That woman, Hera or Tia Callida as she would like to be known in that form, visits several more times.

She doesn't like it, wants to throw the goddess out of the door, possibly with aid of a boot, but manages to restrain herself. She wonders what trouble you could get into by kicking the Queen of the Gods. Maybe she would be turned into a peacock, or a cow, or some other animal.

Well, Hephaestus would probably appreciate the idea anyway.

She keeps silent when Tia comes by, usually because she doesn't have the faintest inkling when she does. She usually drops Leo off with a neighbor to be looked after, because a machine shop full of sharp and dangerous machines isn't a place for toddler, not even a child of Hephaestus. When he's older, certainly, but not yet.

But somehow, even when she drops him off at Miguel's, watches him settle down there peacefully, knows that Miguel will keep a proper eye on her little _mijo_…

She still returns to find Leo back at home with Tia Callida doing… _something_ again.

There were the chilies, which had Leo off jalapeños for weeks…

There were several more instances of the fire crib, although that had managed to become an almost normalcy.

Leo was immune to fire, a gift. It terrified the hell out of her.

Then when he was five, he seared the impression of his hands into a wooden table. He had been on _fire_ – her baby had been on fire.

She had stifled a scream of horror. She rushed up, scooped him into his arms and made him promise not to do that ever again. Fire was a dangerous tool. When he was older. When he was older.

It was her mantra. _When he was older he would do so much…_ but to her, he would never be old enough.

She had taken him to the machine shop the next day.

She had to keep an eye on him, so that Tia would not take him away just yet.

Or never, if she could manage it.

But on the edges of her vision, she sees the possibilities. The Mist twists aside for her, a strange mortal gift. Hephaestus had mused that she may be a mortal seer. A weak one, but the power was there, he had declared.

It was a curse.

She knew she would die in a fire, and that wasn't the worst of it all.

-0-0-0-

Three years pass with almost no incident. She catches sight of monsters, but they seem not to notice her or Leo. Hephaestus had promised his child one more gift, aside from the power of fire. He had said that this one would face too much hardship already – at least he would be masked from monsters.

She had screamed at him for that. What hardships? Why couldn't a _god_ stop it?

Hephaestus had just stared at her sadly and tinkered with some mechanisms - a leaping lion which burst into flames.

She never got her answer.

But yes, three years of peace have managed to lull her into a sense of almost tranquility. She thinks that maybe her future isn't as it seems. Her visions have been wrong before; the future is ever mutable after all.

Her little boy is growing up so fast. He was a wonder with tools, unsurprisingly, but she thinks that he may be the greatest of all- what with being Hephaestus' favored child and everything.

His mind is amazing. The doctors and teachers can say what they like about his ADHD (oh, she knows about that far too well) but her baby is brilliant. He will be the world's greatest engineer one day, she can feel it.

_(There is a sphere dancing in her child's palm, a warship flying in flames… a sacrifice for a laughing goddess.)_

And the best part about her baby is how he tries to keep things upbeat for her sake. He has so many jokes, both truly funny or funnily lame, and they never fail to make her laugh. He is a character, her boy.

She thinks that maybe they can avoid their future.

She is wrong.

She dies with a sleeping earth goddess taunting her, laughing cruelly and telling her that her baby will fall because of this.

She has slated her child for misery.

Her scream is swallowed up in flames.

She will die in a fire.

The future will come true.

-0-0-0-

_Esperanza Valdez dies in a fire at the age of 32, leaving behind an 8 year old child. Mysterious circumstances surround the machine shop fire. The child was found strangely unharmed, although he was unconcious in the center of the wreakage. Arson is a possibilty...  
_

She gets two short paragraphs in the paper, and the life of Esperanza Valdez ends.

Her child's life begins.

-0-0-0-0-0-

A/N

_I've just read the Mark of Athena and the sacrifice line wouldn't leave me. I think there's more to it than that._

_But seriously, Rick Riordan, you are horrible. That is the worst cliffhanger in the history of the world. Why do you do this to us? A year! A year before we find out what happens next!  
_

_I want Percy and Annabeth back now..._

_Anyway, hopefully you liked this.  
_

_The rest of the story will be from Leo's PoV.  
_

_Probably.  
_

_~FO  
_


	2. Mad World

**Of Fire and Flame:  
Mad World  
**

Leo feels like the world has crumbled.

He's dressed up in black, all fitted out in a somber suit. His curls are gelled down roughly; Aunt Rosa had been unforgiving.

She'd called him a _Diablo_. She'd told him that he would never be welcome in her house. She said that he had killed her sister.

_She was __**right**_, Leo thought, eyes fixed on the ground. He was a Diablo, a demon. After all, what else could kill its' own mother but a demon child?

_He'd killed his mother_. The bare truth rings in his head and fills his days with nightmares.

He wonders what will happen to him now. The authorities have declared that he will be put into foster care, since his Aunt didn't want him and they had no concrete proof to throw him into juvie. They hadn't said quite like that, but he knows it's true.

He wishes they did, almost. He deserves punishment for letting his fire get out of control like that.

He blinks back the tears. Hadn't his mother _warned _him? Don't use the fire until he could control it. Fire was a tool, but it was dangerous.

He was a danger. He was dangerous to everyone. He would never be accepted.

After all, he had killed the only person who loved him.

He imagines the creepy lady, the one made of shifting earth, laughing at him. She had said she would break his spirit.

_Well, _he thinks bitterly, _she succeeded._

**_He had killed his mother._ **

-0-0-0-

The boy walks up to his mother's coffin, head bowed. He doesn't say anything when he lays the single white rose onto the casket. Instead, he taps a rhythmic code on the hard wood.

Hephaestus grimaces. He knows Morse code, of course he does, the taps say: '_I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry.'_

He almost materializes there and then. He wants to comfort the boy, this child of Esperanza's. The boy will face despair even greater than this in the future. He should have someone around that cared about him.

But Hephaestus stays where he is. He tells himself it's for the best, after all the last thing the boy needed at his mother's funeral was for an ugly cripple to come and tell him that he was the boy's father.

He tells himself that interfering would not work. He tells himself that the Fates were already spinning their design; there was nothing he could do.

But really, deep inside, he knows the real reason. He's scared. He can't deal with organic life forms, doesn't know how, especially not a living breathing son who's broken and can't be fixed with any tool Hephaestus knows.

So Hephaestus stays away and Leo stays alone.

-0-0-0-

Leo stays in the temporary house for a few weeks before someone decides they want him.

It hadn't been bad, the house. Most of the kids stayed away from him; the ones who tried to get close to him eventually gave up when he didn't respond. Even the bullies were creeped out by him.

He had just sat on his bed the entire time tinkering with whatever screws and washers he had found, building and dismantling and building again.

It took his mind off the grief. It was simple mindless work, and it tied him to his mother. When he thinks that, his fingers still and he pushes the feeling back down.

He's gotten good at that- suppressing his emotions.

One day a young couple comes and takes him in. The system had decided that he'd be their foster child. He doesn't say anything, just packs his meager possessions into an old bag and lugs it away.

No where would be home again- one house would just be the same as the last.

He leaves without looking back and doesn't say a word when the jittery man tries to call him _son_. The woman is slightly better and just calls him _Leo_.

He stares back at them with dull eyes and wishes for the woman who called him _mijo._

-0-0-0-

He stays with them for the better part of a year. He's started talking again, starting to joke around and he thinks that maybe Parker and Sally (his foster parents) aren't that bad after all.

School's okay, he guesses. He just deals with the bullies like how his mother taught him. Joke with them, be showy, _be smarter than them_, and you could get away. He's got a couple of friends, nothing special, but it's not too bad.

The day he realizes that he's happy is the day he runs away.

He can't have their trust again; because if they trust him it means they aren't scared of him. They should be scared of him.

He can't burn anyone ever again.

Leo is found three days later and shipped off to another home.

-0-0-0-

After the train wreck of joy that his first home was, the second one is better. It's a single father, with two kids of his own. Why he decided to take in another, scrawny nine-year old is something Leo never found out.

It wasn't as if the man really cared anyway. He treats his own kids nice enough, like a worried and harassed father usually does.

Leo, he mostly ignores. Leo gets food, drink and a house over his head, and that's about it. Conversation? Yeah, right.

Leo finds that he's satisfied. At least this way he won't have the chance to burn.

The other two kids treat him okay, if awkwardly. He doesn't blame them; he'd have acted this way with a stranger in his house too. _His mother wouldn't have though…_

He pushes away the thought.

He stays with them for about a year and a half (the longest he ever stays). He is doing quite well in school, for all his ADHD. Sure, literature and reading in general were a closed book to him, and History was never going to be a passing grade, but he excelled in Maths and Science.

That stuff was easy; Mom had taught him all of that years ago.

Then Jocelyn comes and his world is turned upside down.

She is tall, about three inches above him and very pretty. She is two years older than him and is his single neighbor's only daughter. Her golden sun-light hair tumbles down her shoulders and her eyes are sky blue. She has a voice like an angel. She is Leo's first crush.

Somehow, she becomes his friend.

That itself almost prompts Leo to run several times, but he never has the heart to. He knows he should, that he cares more about Jocelyn than he has ever cared for anyone since his mom, and it is only a matter of time before he hurts her too…

But he's too scared to run. He is almost happy.

Then Jocelyn runs before him.

He doesn't know what happened. One day, they were goofing off like always, making stupid jokes about the popular clique, and the next day she was gone, together with her mother.

He thinks it might have something to do with the creepy man he saw following her around, the one that looked like he had one eye.

Jocelyn's mother returns a week later and Leo never hears from Jocelyn again. He runs away after that.

-0-0-0-

_Jocelyn arrives at Camp Half-Blood terrified. She is never claimed, even though everyone suspects that she is the Child of Apollo._

_She pretends that she doesn't care. She wishes she was back in Kansas with Leo. She becomes close friend with Luke, the head counselor of her cabin._

_When Luke leaves to join the Titans, she holds out a month before joining him._

_She is slain in the War of Manhattan, a name that is lost to time, not even inscribed on a bead.  
_

_Leo never finds out._

-0-0-0-

The next home is the worst. He doesn't know how the stupid man even got his foster license.

He stays there for all of two weeks before running away again. The police don't bother trying to send him back when they find the belt marks on his back.

Leo spits on the man's face when they take him away.

-0-0-0-

The next house if fairly okay. The foster parents are nice enough, if stern and rather incapable of dealing with someone with ADHD.

He and the dad get into fights a lot, especially concerning Leo's penchant for taking apart various electrical appliances. It probably doesn't help that Leo can't control his mouth to save his life. (ADHD, anyone?)

In his defense, the machines do work a lot better once he's done with them; not that his foster father believes him. (_freak, idiot, useless – all words that rush out in the heat of the moment and even though the father apologizes, it still stays between them)_

But he doesn't mind it too much, so he stays.

The mother warms up to him quick; Leo has always been better with the mothers. He cares too much about them.

School was nice. He won a medal for the steam-powered chicken chucker he tossed together for the science fair. His foster family takes him out to dinner to celebrate.

Then a new bully comes to school – his name is Ryan and he is a douche bag of the highest degree.

He is also Leo's foster brother.

Leo has never had too much trouble with bullies; he's learned how to wrap them up in webs of their own design that leave them dangling like flies in a spider web. He's the comic relief that is secretly pulling their strings.

He can't do it with Ryan.

When he tries to pull a big showy routine to trip Ryan off his feet, Ryan simply takes it and runs with it and turns it on him.

Ryan's the worst kind of bully – a smart one. There isn't a night that goes by that doesn't involve them hurling verbal abuse at each other. Ryan's always hit home.

(_Freak)_

He gets into physical fights with Ryan sometimes. He always loses.

It goes on for two and a half months before Leo nearly snaps. Ryan has him pressed against a wall, a hammy fist clenching his neck and Leo can't breathe.

Ryan screams suddenly when his jacket catches fire spontaneously. When the fire is gone, he turns around to wail on Leo for whatever the little shit had done.

He's too late. Leo is gone.

-0-0-0-

Lady Hera watches it all unfold below her.

She smiles, cold.

-0-0-0-

There's really no reason as to why he runs away from the next home. For once, the mother is nice but not too stand-offish. The two other foster kids - twins - were nice and didn't try to pick on him. They had lost their parents in a fire too. They understood.

Except they didn't, because they hadn't started the fire.

But it's a nice home, an actual out of a picture book cottage and lawn.

He runs anyway; on the anniversary of his mother's death.

There's no reason for it at all.

-0-0-0-

He is determined to try with his sixth home. He is charming from the get-go, with a full-arsenal of cheesy jokes and hammy lines.

The other kids take to him, both the fostered boys and the actual-daughter-of-the-foster-parent girl.

He thinks he would have liked to have a sibling.

It's a pretty good life. Anna is the cook of the house; Jack is the jock and Stanley is the nerd. Leo is the technician/repair boy. The foster mother laughs when she sees them goof off. It's the best house Leo has ever lived in. (_since his mom)_

He doesn't even want to run.

Then his English teacher ruined his life. The woman was screechy, a horrible old bat with a face made of putty. She hissed strangely when she talked. When she wasn't around, Leo imitated the heck out of her.

"_You will- sss- givesss me your lunchsss moneysss. I have –sss- the weirdest lissssssssp in hisssstory."_ All that jazz.

He hated her and she hated him. She picked on him for being so severely ADHD. Leo was thankful he wasn't dyslexic to boot.

Then one day he was given detention. Something about disrespecting her or some crap like that. He didn't care; he would just get it over with and go home to enjoy the spaghetti Anna had promised to make.

He doesn't remember what happened next. Everything is a blur. But he thinks – _thinks_- that he saw the school geek, a Bush something, rush in with a reed pipe. His English teacher screams and the dork is pulling him up.

He might've seen hooves. He is fourteen at the time and his father's protection is fading; not that Leo knows that.

The dork tells him to come with him now. It's a matter of life and death.

Leo doesn't need telling. He turns and runs.

When he's found by the authorities, he is sent to the Wilderness School, blamed for assault and also for being a manic runaway.

His life changes forever.

He meets Piper McLean and a while later, Jason Grace.

Things pretty much hit the fan at that point.

-0-0-0-

A/N

Should I cover the bits in the book? I mean, Rick Riordan has obviously done a great job of it and it'd seem pointless to do so too. Especially since I wouldn't do half as good a job.

So should I skip it directly and go to the period where the Son of Neptune is occurring or skim over it?

Please tell me what you think!

For cookies. Virtual cookies. You know you want them.

And I've decided. The story will be LARGELY Leo's PoV with mild interludes like above. Just to make it seem more… 3 dimensional? Or something.

~FO


End file.
